


Eight Kids and Counting

by lcwilkie



Category: Leverage
Genre: Anyways, Dad!Eliot, Dad!Hardison, Mom!?Parker, Parker's not really a mom, family times with the OT3, more of a cool older sibling?, not really - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-15
Updated: 2018-06-14
Packaged: 2019-05-23 13:21:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,910
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14935061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lcwilkie/pseuds/lcwilkie
Summary: Various short snippets about the OT3 collecting children like stray cats.





	Eight Kids and Counting

**Author's Note:**

  * For [zahnie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/zahnie/gifts).



> So this whole thing is a birthday gift for my friend, who is the best.  
> I was planning on polishing it up, a bit, before posting, unlike my other stuff, but then I got a cold, and that didn't happen. So anyways! Mostly unedited, definitely unbeta'd, not necessarily quickly written but certainly not written with any grand designs on being the Great American Novel - Fanfiction Version.

“So what's..…what’s with all……all of this?” Nate asked, gesturing vaguely at the seemingly endless expanse of lawn, the house with the seemingly endless number of windows, the seemingly endless number of children playing throughout both. “Is it like with, with Luka? Did Parker steal another busload of children that you three are now responsible for finding homes for? What’s going on?”

 

“Sort of,” Eliot replied, putting down the little girl he’d been holding and watching her run off to join a group playing fetch with a frisbee and a dog and a lot of rolling about in the dirt. He turned to look at Nate and gave him a once-over, before doing the same to Sophie. It was still hard to call her anything but that, and since she didn’t seem to mind it, the name had stuck. “You two are looking well; how was Paris?”

 

“Oh, it was marvelous!” Sophie gushed. “We wandered around the Louvre, reminiscing about when I would steal things, and Nate would chase me, a few romantic dinners—”

 

“Yeah, yeah, it was great it was lovely, but….what do you mean ‘sort of’?” Nate interrupted, getting an eye roll from Sophie “You do know you can’t just….steal children, right Eliot? That’s called kidnapping.”

 

“’Sort of’ means we didn’t steal them, and aren’t finding homes for them. But we are responsible for them, so….’sort of,’”

 

“But why?” Sophie asked. “I mean, why are you three responsible for, what, five, six children?” She gestured to the group playing with the dog, and another child sitting in a tree with a book in their lap and a very high-quality pair of headphones.

 

“It’s actually about eight, honestly,” Eliot said, grinning like he’d just been told he’d won a week-long all-expenses-paid sturgeon fishing trip.

 

“Eight children? How did you manage to get Parker to accept _eight children_ living with her?” Nate was incredulous. The Parker he’d left was comfortable with herself, and their little group of five, but still had difficulty with any other kind of social interaction.

 

“She actually started it. Come inside, I’ll get you something to drink,” Eliot said, leading Nate and Sophie into the house, through to the kitchen at the back. They had to wade past another two kids chasing each other up the stairs to get there.

 

“It started with Travis and Riley…”

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Travis and Riley hadn’t been kicked out, exactly. They knew they were welcome in the house. It was just….when Mom and Dad had friends over for a few drinks it always turned into more than a few, and usually there was some kind of fight between people, and sometimes the police were called. Even at “good” parties, the noise lasted well into the early hours of the morning and there was always a mess to clean up and usually broken dishes. On two occasions, a broken window.

 

It was easier to not be in the house during the parties, even if the alternative was sitting in a park in the middle of February, while snow came tumbling down from the skies.

 

And that was where Parker found them. She was staring out the back window of the Kia Rondo they’d bought earlier that year for an unobtrusive vehicle, while Eliot and Hardison bickered in the front over whether the special effects in the movie were actually possible. She didn’t care about the conversation, she was just happy they’d left her the remains of the jumbo bag of popcorn.

 

Her thief’s eyes were still scanning everywhere, though, even in the snowstorm. Always pay attention to where you are and what’s around you and what you can take and what it’s value is at a fence.  And because she was happy, and full of buttery popcorn, and warm, they were almost past the park before she noticed the two figures sitting on the park bench and yelled for Eliot to stop the car.

 

She was rolling out onto the road before he’d had time to finish pumping the brakes and bring the car to a sliding stop in the snow. “Parker! Wait till the car has _stopped_ before getting out!” was Eliot’s reaction, while Hardison swore at the sticky orange mess his soda had made from the sudden stop.

 

“Sorry,” Parker said “but there’s two kids in that park, and its cold and snowy out and that’s not a good combination. We have to bring them home.”

 

With that, Eliot and Hardison both looked across at where she was pointing. Eliot, courtesy of his various combat backgrounds, saw the huddled figures immediately. Hardison, through his courtesy of his video game playthroughs, saw them right after.

 

“Parker. Babe. We can’t go grab kids out of a park, at night. I know you want to help, but that’s called “kidnapping.” We don’t know why they are there or where their parents are. Maybe they’re just building a late night snowman.” Hardison tried to reason with her.

 

“Hardison, it’s nearly midnight! And two degrees! They shouldn’t be out here! We should at least take them home!”

 

Eliot looked between the two of them for a minute. “I agree with Parker,” he said. “We can at least go see if they need a ride, or…or a cell phone to call for one,” He continued, well aware that most kids wouldn’t get into a car with three strangers.

 

Hardison vehemently objected. Eliot just looked at Parker, and undid his seatbelt.

 

“Then you stay here and keep the car running. It’s fucking cold out and I don’t want to have to wait for the car to heat up again.”

 

With that, Eliot and Parker crossed the street to the park, and slowly approached the bench, walking arm in arm to appear non-threatening.

 

“Mr. Eliots!” The boy jumped up, noticing the figures. Eliot paused, tensing, trying to think how this kid new his name. Then he remembered Hardison chuckling at his alias for the con a few weeks back, Spencer Eliots, the History substitute.

 

“Oh, hey…Trevor, was it?”

 

“Travis, sir.”

 

“Ok, Travis, what….what are you doing here? It’s only Tuesday, you’ve got school tomorrow. Bit late to make a snowman.”

 

“Oh…..well….it’s nothing. Me n’ Riley just wanted a walk, didn’t we Riley?” Travis turned to the smaller figure, clearly setting the path for the lie he wanted followed.

 

“Do you need us to walk you home? It’s pretty bad out,” Eliot asked, glancing at Parker. So far, she hadn’t said anything, was just looking at Riley, sitting on the bench, huddled up in a coat several sizes too large.

 

“No thank you, we’re….we’re going to sit out a bit longer. We don’t live far, we can get home ourselves, it’s ok!” Travis insisted.

 

Eliot didn’t believe him, but had no evidence to the contrary. When he’d been acting as the sub, Travis (who we remembered now) hadn’t ever come in with bruises that couldn’t be explained, had always had a signature that didn’t look forged on the take-home reading log.

 

As much as he wanted to help, you could only do so if the other person wanted to be helped. Another glance at Parker, noting how she was still in a staring contest, before deciding that there wasn’t anything they could do except maybe call the police, and decided that was a better choice than standing in the snow arguing with an eleven-year-old.

 

“Ok, well, don’t stay out too la—”

 

“Do you want some hot chocolate?” Parker cut in, asking Riley. “Eliot here makes the best, with frothed milk and marshmallows, and real melted chocolate.” By the end of the sentence, Parker was sitting on her haunches in front of Riley, smiling one of her rare, real smiles, the kind that broke Eliot’s heart a little because he could see the fragility of it around the edges, the parts of Parker’s smile that said she was still scared of expressing emotion.

 

That fragility seemed to help though, because it made Riley nod before glancing at Travis. And Eliot saw big blue eyes and pert little nose and fine blond bangs and a dusting of freckles in a face no more than seven years old and decided that cops weren’t the best way to go, and remembered that sometimes people said they didn’t need help when they actually did.

 

“Hey, if you two don’t live far, you can come back to our place for a bit, have some hot chocolate to warm up, and then we can take you home.” Eliot followed up on Parker’s lead.

 

Riley seemed hesitant, wanting to come with them, but looking at Travis for his lead. For his part, Travis was biting his lower lip, warnings about going with strangers who offered food ringing in his head. But Mr. Eliots wasn’t a total stranger, and it was cold out, and real hot chocolate sounded nice. So, hesitantly, he agreed, and the four of them walked back to where Hardison was waiting in the car.

 

In the time it took to make the hot chocolate, which wasn’t a fast process, Parker had convinced both kids to have a hot shower while Hardison found some old t-shirts of Eliot’s for the kids to wear while their clothes were put through the drier.

 

In the time it took to drink the hot chocolate, Eliot, Parker, and Hardison had gotten enough information out of the kids and the school records system and the Social Services system of reports to know that while Travis and Riley weren’t beaten or starved or abused, and that their parents weren’t necessarily bad people, but neither were they particularly attentive to the needs of their children.

 

In the time it took to convince Travis and Riley to settle onto the sofa for a nap while Eliot called their parents, Hardison had created false identities for him, Parker and Eliot, and arranged everything so the Social Services database showed them as the perfect match for a foster home for the two kids. At least short-term, till a longer placement could be found.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

“But Travis is a great kid, really smart, and Riley’s just the sweetest little thing, she’s the one I was talking to when you pulled up, and Parker worried about them winding up like her, passed around from home to home, and Hardison argued that he’d already made the identities for us so we might as well get some use out of them, and we just….didn’t arrange for them to go to a different placement. They still see their parents every week, mostly, so it’s all worked out.”

 

By the time Eliot finished telling the story, he’d already pulled out a massive amount of potatoes, a giant sheet of marinating steaks, and several pounds of asparagus and green beans.

 

“But…Eliot, it’s only August! How did you collect ten more kids between February and August? Did you get two a month or something?” Sophie asked.

 

“I want to hear Parker answer that one, actually,” Nate said. “Where is Parker, anyways?”

 

“Scoping a bank, we’ve got a job next weekend.”

 

“You’re still running cons with a eight kids?”

 

“Of course. This much food isn’t cheap. Or easy to prepare for large crowds.” With that, Eliot gave a piercing whistle, and yelled in his best parade ground voice “HEY! DINNER CREW, PREP TIME STARTS NOW!”

 

And Nate and Sophie watched as a three kids came charging into the kitchen, ready to help cook.

**Author's Note:**

> Yaay! Posting Fic!
> 
> I don't do it often, if you are going to leave a comment please be nice. I also haven't actually watched Leverage in a while, so characterization may be off.


End file.
